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Will weather control become a reality?

Are plans afoot within the US military to control the weather?

Humankind has always dreamed of being able to exert his control on his environment. Sometimes it is as easy as chopping down some trees, levelling off a hill or damming a river, but loftier goals have remained elusive. King Canute demonstrated the limitations of man by standing on a beach and shouting at the waves, but other cultures have tried to modify the weather with rituals such as rain dances or sacrifices. More recently, attempts have been made to seed clouds, notably by the USSR to prevent rain on their May Day parades, and suggestions to stop hurricanes by detonating nuclear weapons inside them are so common as to be in the NOAA FAQ page!

Barring these efforts, though, true control over the weather has remained the province of the science fiction writers. That might change though, if the US Department of Defense gets its way. Following the recent wave of devastating Atlantic hurricanes that have battered the Gulf Coast and Caribbean, minds at the USAF and elsewhere are thinking of ways to influence the development of these storms, to switch them off, and possibly, turn them on:

...[S]ome blue sky thinkers have already looked into these and other scenarios in "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025" ? a research paper written by a seven person team of military officers and presented in 1996 as part of a larger study dubbed Air Force 2025.

"Current technologies that will mature over the next 30 years will offer anyone who has the necessary resources the ability to modify weather patterns and their corresponding effects, at least on the local scale," the authors of the report explained. "Current demographic, economic, and environmental trends will create global stresses that provide the impetus necessary for many countries or groups to turn this weather-modification ability into a capability."

"Assuming that in 2025 our national security strategy includes weather-modification, its use in our national military strategy will naturally follow. Besides the significant benefits an operational capability would provide, another motivation to pursue weather-modification is to deter and counter potential adversaries," the report stated. "The technology is there, waiting for us to pull it all together," the authors noted.

According to Bernard Eastlund, CTO and founder of a research company based in San Diego, CA, technologies such as microwave plasmas could be used to heat regions of the atmosphere, thereby influencing weather formations:

In my opinion, the new technology for use of artificial plasma layers in the atmosphere: as heater elements to modify steering winds, as a modifier of electrostatic potential to influence lightning distribution, and for generation of acoustic and gravitational waves, could ultimately provide a core technology for a science of severe weather modification,"

I'm not sure I buy that last bit, but it's clear that the ability to manipulate extreme weather events would be invaluable, for both civilian populations and also for strategic concerns. Climate change is expected to increase the severity and frequency of tropical storms. Even the possibility of reducing their impact, perhaps by heating up adjacent regions of the atmosphere to take some of the energy out of the growing storm could have a significant impact, lessening damage and loss of life in affected regions. With such benefits upon success, one can easily see the financial incentives towards pursuing such research.